For they marked the spot where his bones were lain
by SplatDragon
Summary: Sadie hadn't heard from the Marstons in ages. With her bounty hunting, and the unreliability of the postal service, it wasn't uncommon for them to go a while without hearing from one another. But it had been too long, so she rode up to visit them. But the ranch was abandoned-no animals in the paddocks, the barn and the house rotting. And three graves rested beneath a tree.


Sadie hadn't heard from the Marstons in ages.

That wasn't concerning**, **on its own. Letters often got lost on their way from Blackwater to South America, especially since the revolution had broken out in Mexico. And she'd been working on a particularly challenging Bounty for the last month and a half—a letter from Tilly was waiting for her when she finally made it back to civilization.

She'd kept in contact with most of the surviving Van Der Linde's. In her wandering, as she'd hunted bounties through the states before moving south, she'd come across them. Tilly, in Saint Denis. Mary-Beth and the Reverend in New York, Pearson in Rhodes. She didn't talk to Pearson, much, and she'd exchanged a letter or two with Karen before the drink got her, but they'd never been particularly close. But she'd always stayed in contact with the Marstons and with Charles although Charles, up in Canada, was very hard to reach.

When a month passed, then two, and she didn't receive a letter and her letters went unanswered, a worry began to set into the back of her mind. Of course, they could have been lost, destroyed in a wagon raid in Mexico—mail wagons were popular targets, after all, as they were often full of money and supplies. But _all _her letters? All _their _letters? And she'd gotten a letter from Charles by then, two from Tilly and sent one to Mary-Beth.

So she saddled up Ares (she'd lost Hera a few years back, the mare had begun to grow old and unsound and so she'd sold her off to a farm), and began the long, long ride to Beecher's Hope. And it was a long ride-through Venezuela and Colombia, Panama Costa Rica, Nicaragua and the Honduras, up through the war ridden Mexico before, finally, crossing up into West Elizabeth.

It took her, of course, a very long time. Long enough that she decided to purchase another horse, a gelding she called Mars, so that she could switch between them to keep them fresh and ride more of the day. Ares had begun to struggle to keep the pace she had set; long enough that she'd sent, and received, several more letters from Charles, all the way up in Canada, and the others—

and none from the Marstons.

Not for lack of trying on her part. She wrote letter after letter, sent several from every post office she passed. Even requested they be staggered, so that if one were lost, or one's wagon was destroyed, the whole of them wouldn't be lost. And she'd even found a few of them in destroyed wagons, when she'd stopped to dig through the debris for anything useful, stamped into the dirt, paper torn or burned.

She stayed for the night in an awful little town by the name of Tumbleweed that she used to avoid like the plague, would have ridden up to Armadillo but the last time she'd been there it had been ridden with Cholera and she had no way of knowing that the plague was long gone, didn't want to waste time riding up to check only to have to turn around and ride right back, or ride through cougar country at night to reach Beecher's Hope and hope she wasn't shot for coming to the door exhausted and unannounced.

Mars and Ares were boarded for the night in the stable with a pasture full of horses that all looked painfully familiar, groomed and bedded down, and she almost thought to stay an extra night to let them recover after such a long trip. But such a long time without any correspondence from the Marstons was so abnormal it put a sour taste in her mouth and so she decided that she'd let them have all the rest they needed while she visited—either at the steading or in the Blackwater stables; she didn't want to overstay her welcome but John had all-but insisted that she stay, and stay, and stay even longer last she had visited.

So she left early the next morning, wanting to ride straight through to Beecher's Hope, not wanting to have to set up a camp for the night, especially not in Hennigan's Stead, infamous for its bursting cougar population.

She rode passed Armadillo (which, from the looks of it, was apparently well recovered from the Cholera outbreak), around a bustling horse ranch, stayed on edge as she rode through Thieves Landing, knowing hers was a well known face but that was several years past, so she kept her gun hand at the ready, careful to keep her wariness hidden. But she made it through unaccosted, and then was in the rippling grasses of the Great Plains.

It hadn't changed, much. The same phone lines loomed overhead, and she hadn't missed them. Rabbits fled from her horses' hooves, coyotes yipped off in the distance. But there wasn't a pronghorn to be seen, and no matter how hard she looked, she couldn't spot hide nor hair of the once endless oceans of bison.

A car rattled towards her, and Mars went wild eyed, crow hopping before digging in his hooves, unable to move far with his reins attached to Ares' bridle. She guided the two of them off the road, cutting towards the Hope, the house that John and Charles had worked to put together (pre-built, how ridiculous was that? Such a civilized concept, and her mouth twitched at the thought of how Dutch would react to such a thing) coming into view. Sadie stopped to let Mars watch the car drive out of sight, so he could learn it wasn't any danger; if she did end up keeping him, he'd have to learn that cars wouldn't hurt him. More and more of her bounties were using cars, she'd found.

Beecher's Hope was quiet.

No roosters called, no chickens clucked. No cows lowed, no horses nickered. Rufus didn't bark at the sound of her approach. If she didn't know any better, she'd think she was riding through one of those abandoned farms that were so prolific in New Austin. But, no, that was the house that John and Charles had built, that she had convalesced in, and there was the barn, its doors wide open, that Rachel and Hera and Falmouth had been stabled in. The doghouse that John had written to her about building with Jack, and the silo that she'd never seen the purpose of, considering that they couldn't grow anything but rocks on their land.

The paddock outside of the barn was empty, no horses or cattle grazing, the grass overgrown. The small chicken pen was vacant, the door hanging off its hinges, feed bins overturned. And up there, on the hill, she could just make out a wooden grave-marker that must belong to their daughter. John had written her almost constantly when they'd had her, from the moment Abigail had revealed she was in the family way until, after an abrupt, long period of no communication, a short letter informing Sadie of her death.

She frowned, that worry sprouting from a seed into a plant, roots constricting her chest, as she swung down from Ares' saddle, thumping up the steps of the patio, the wood creaking, rotting and threatening to give way beneath her feet. The plants that Abigail had been growing were long dead in their planters, the furniture overturned and destroyed.

Sadie knocked, the door creaking open, and she called out "John?" as she poked her head inside, not quite fancying being shot for wandering in. But there was no response, no calls of "Sadie?" "Aunt Sadie!" or even Rufus' barking, so she walked inside, finding the house in desolate condition.

The walls were covered in cobwebs, and rats scurried into hiding at the sound of her voice, shredding webs and sending spiders flying. She picked up a photograph—one of Arthur and John, John not any older than Jack had been when they'd hunted down Micah, running her finger over the glass and wrinkling her nose when it left a streak an inch deep in the dust.

She poked through the house, finding a building of rats and moth eaten fabric, dust covered furniture and photographs. Jack's room wasn't as bad, but only just barely.

The simplest answer was that they had moved out, left and moved on. But when had things with John Marston ever been simple?

Besides, they wouldn't have left without telling her. Without telling _someone_. She'd asked everyone—Tilly and Mary-Beth and Charles, had even written to Pearson and the Reverend, and none of them had received a letter since her last.

So she walked back outside, moved to mount up Aries, intended on poking around Blackwater to see if she could figure out what the hell had happened; after all, a family abruptly up and leaving their ranch would surely cause some sort of gossip. And, if no one there knew, she remembered John mentioning a Bonnie MacFarlane in his letters, and she could ask her.

Sadie was many things, and determined was definitely one of them. John was one of her friends, and like hell was she going to let him just abandon her like that.

Aries grunted when she reached for his saddle horn to mount up, tired after so much hard riding, and she paused, reaching to grab a treat out of his saddlebag, hoping to encourage him on for that last ride into Blackwater.

If she hadn't, she would have missed it.

The setting sun cast a light on their daughter's grave-marker, but it didn't look quite right. It caught her attention out of the corner of her eye, something she didn't consciously notice but couldn't ignore, looking away from the horse's spotted hide to look up at the carved wood.

She'd never met the girl, had only known of her through John's letters. But she had been loved, for what time she had been with them. John had adored her from the moment she was born, had wanted great things for her, and even where she stood, she could see it in the care that had been taken in the carving of the headstone.

It looked, she realized suddenly, almost like Arthur's, golden light shining through a ring of wood attached to a cross. It had been years since she thought of him (_"Look… I can talk about him… It just hurts, is all," _she'd heard John say to Abigail, when they'd thought she was asleep, and she agreed with him wholeheartedly), shoved to the back of her mind with Jake and the rest of the Van Der Linde's after putting an end to the Micah business, the parts of her past that she didn't need for bounty hunting. But she decided, then and there, she'd finally pay a visit to his grave—she'd seen it, once, silhouetted by the sun as she rode passed while hunting for Joe and Cleet, but hadn't been able to find the heart to go and pay him her respects.

So, too, she could take a moment to give the girl her respects. The girl had been born with all the opportunities to have a better life than any of them, the daughter of a pair of ranchers, not outlaws, with an older brother that loved her, and a world that was slowly changing, in which she was seeing women slowly, very slowly, gain more and more freedoms. And then she'd died before she'd had the chance to take advantage of them; she'd been better than any of them, yet she'd died where they had lived.

The troughs at the hitching posts were bone empty, and half rotted besides, so she left their reins looped around their saddle horns instead so they wouldn't trip themselves and gave them both apples to tide them over until they could be stabled, before making her way up the hill, the near silence having her keeping her gun hand at the ready.

She didn't reach the top of the hill.

The worry rotted away, the roots clenching tight in her chest, leaving her gasping desperately for air, the world spinning around her. Her eyes burned suspiciously, and she _hurt _in a way she hadn't since Arthur had died, before him her poor, poor Jake, and as her knees hit the ground she could feel that massive, shoddily stitched wound tear open, bleeding as she found herself unable to look away from the three graves that sat beneath that massive tree that she had dozed beneath so many times before.

Two sat close together, one looking somewhat older than the other, the wood more aged, a few feet away from the little girl's grave. _'John Marston', _the oldest one read, and she _couldn't breathe_,

_'1873 - 1911 _

_Loving Husband and Father _

_Blessed are the _

_Peacemakers' _

Abigail had been illiterate, still, she remembered, though she'd had the opportunity to learn for years. So young Jack, only sixteen years old, would have had to carve his pa's epitaph.

She'd never been able to bury her Jake, and she didn't think she ever could have been able to do such. It had always been one of her biggest regrets, and suddenly she wondered if, had she been able to, she _would _have been able to.

And then, within touching distance and much newer, a simpler grave, a square of wood on a cross,

_'Abigail Marston _

_1877 - 1914 _

_Always in our hearts' _

Abigail… Abigail was dead, too.

The people Arthur had given his life to save, gone like that. How? What had happened? For a moment, her mind went to Dutch. Had he come back, gone after John? To get rid of the last of his past, of his original 'family', of his 'sons'? But no, she couldn't see him doing that. He had spared John, back on that mountain, had looked him in the eye and walked away. She didn't know Dutch well, had only known him for a small amount of time when he'd saved her before his decline, but some part of her knew he wouldn't go after John unless John went after him, first.

Sadie didn't want to look at the last grave, sitting further away from the two eldest Marstons but still within spitting distance. Didn't want to see little Jack Marston's grave, didn't want to see that Arthur's sacrifice had been in vain, that almost all of those people she would call family were dead.

But she had to, had to see with her own two eyes, looked over and fought down a hysterical laugh.

The grave marker simply read:

_'Uncle' _

And nothing else.

It was older, looked about as old as John's.

Jack… Jack wasn't dead. Uncle lay rotting, six feet below that grave marker, not the little boy she'd watch run after a dog, call her Aunt Sadie, chase crickets and frogs, not the boy she'd watched learn to ride a horse and struggle to herd cattle.

But he was orphaned.

Both of his parents were dead, rotting six feet beneath the ground, and he was only nineteen years old. He'd had to bury them, been left alone. Didn't have any family left, his aunts and uncles, none of them blood, dead or scattered to the winds.

It _hurt_, it still hurt. John had been the closest thing she'd had to a brother, aside from Arthur, and one of her dearest friends, and she'd liked Abigail a great deal. She'd have to write the others, tell them that they'd lost another member of their family, that John had joined Davey and Mac, Jenny and Sean, Lenny and Hosea and Kieran and Susan and Arthur, though she hadn't known half of them well enough to mourn them, they'd been family in all but blood to those she still remained in contact with, and it was not the sort of news she enjoyed delivering.

But it was something that needed to be done, and something that needed to be done in person.

She looked over the grave markers again.

The baby girl.

John.

Abigail.

Uncle.

Four more people she'd lost.

But Jack Marston still lived.

So she stood, brushed off her knees and wiped off her face. Returned to Mars and mounted up, intending on resting for the night in Blackwater before heading out.

She had a boy to find.


End file.
